World’s Oldest Axe Fragment
Found in the Outback
A piece of the world’s oldest axe has been recovered in the remote
Kimberley region of Western Australia. The axe fragment is about
the size of a thumbnail and dates to the Stone Age 45–49,
years ago – around the time humans arrived on the continent, and
more than 10,000 years earlier than any previous ground-edge axe
discoveries.
“Since there are no known axes in South-East Asia during the
Ice Age, this discovery shows us that when humans arrived in
Australia they began to experiment with new technologies, inventing
ways to exploit the resources they encountered in the new Australian
landscape,” said Prof Peter Hiscock of The University of Sydney.
The axe fragment was initially excavated in the early 1990s by
Prof Sue O’Connor of the Australian National University among
a sequence of food scraps, tools, artwork and other artifacts from
Carpenter’s Gap, a large rock shelter that was one of the irst sites
occupied by modern humans. “Nowhere else in the world do you
get axes at this date,” O’Connor said. “In Japan such axes appear
about 35,000 years ago, but in most countries in the world they
arrive with agriculture after 10,000 years ago.”
In 2014, Hiscock’s team recovered a small fragment of a polished
axe from the oldest levels of the site. New studies of the fragment
have revealed that it comes from an axe that had been shaped from
basalt and then polished by grinding it on another rock until it
was very smooth. The team believes the axe was most likely carried
away to be used elsewhere, leaving the fragment behind.
“Polished stone axes were crucial tools in hunter-gatherer soci-
eties, and were once the deining characteristic of the Neolithic phase
of human life,” Hiscock explained. “But when were axes invented? This
question has been pursued for decades since archaeologists discov-
ered that in Australia axes were older than in many other places. Now
we have a discovery that appears to answer the question.”
Evidence suggests the technology was developed in Australia
after people arrived around 50,000 years ago. “We know that they
didn’t have axes where they came from,” O’Connor said. “There
are no axes in the islands to our north. They arrived in Australia
and innovated axes.”
Hiscock said the ground-edge axe technology speciically aroseas the dispersing humans adapted to their new regional land-
scapes. “Although humans spread across Australia, axe technology
did not spread with them. Axes were only made in the tropical
north, perhaps suggesting two different colonising groups or that
the technology was abandoned as people spread into desert and
sub-topical woodlands,” he said.
“These differences between northern Australia, where axes were
always used, and southern Australia, where they were not, originated
around the time of colonisation and persisted until the last few
thousand years when axes began to be made in most southern parts
of mainland Australia.”
The team’s latest discoveries have been published in Australian
Archaeology.JUNE 2016|| 7Subscribe online
Full online access plus additional
content when you subscribe at
http://www.austscience.comCompiled by Guy Nolchfacebook.com/austscience Follow us @austscience
The world's oldest axe fragment, seen here under a microscope,
is the size of a thumb nail. Credit: Australian Archaeology